Anti-Gay Religious Group: Ill. Marriage Equality Bill Caused Tornados

A tornado 2 miles west of Flatville, Ill., moves northeast at 12:51 p.m. (Source:AP Photo)

Last weekend, Illinois was hit by several tornados, causing devastating damage throughout the state. While officials are still calculating the damage, an anti-gay fundamentalist Christian group is claiming the tornados struck Illinois as a result of the state’s recently passed marriage equality bill.

According to Right Wing Watch, Robert Ritchie, the executive director for America Needs Fatima, a group created by the conservative American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, claims that the tornados are a result of Illinois’ lawmakers green-lighting a bill that provides same-sex couples with marriage rights.

"The massive tornadoes that hit Illinois after the passing of the same sex ’marriage’ bill, has stimulated many people to reflection," Ritchie wrote in a blog post. "In it, some see God’s chastisement; others see it as yet one more merciful warning from Providence; others yet deny both options and give various reasons."

Anti-gay religious conservatives have linked the LGBT community to natural disasters before. Last year, when Hurricane Sandy struck the east coast, Christian pastor John McTernan claimed the deadly storm was a result of LGBT people and President Barack Obama’s support for marriage equality. McTernan said the storm was "the most powerful hurricane on record" that "could do catastrophic damage to the entire Northeast."

Just this week Arkady Mamontov, a prominent Russian journalist, said that the LGBT community was to blame for a meteorite crashing in Chelyabinsk, a city located just to the east of the Ural Mountains and on the border of Europe and Asia, last year.

He said the incident was a warning "to all of us that we should keep the family tradition, traditional love, or else something else - not only the Chelyabinsk meteorite - will hit us."

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